This invention addresses the sports game invented by Dr. James A. Naismith in 1891 at Springfield College, Springfield Massachusetts. His selection of the thirteen rules of the game was to facilitate the function of an exercise activity. No consideration was given to playing, court size, basket (goal) height, male versus female adaptability, future human species physical demographics, male versus female genetics, potential youth-age adaptability, academic scholarships, professional adaptation, added value, player performance, maintenance of essential facilities and rules to maintain the necessary value of the game and to support the intrinsic and historical value to all.
With the obvious concern of those in charge, even the one apparent progressive rule addition in 1987 of the three-point radial shot from eighteen feet has, after approximately 25 years, thus far been diluted by the continued NCAA administration of 50-75 years of the questionably used “mini-rules” management changes. The length of the three-point shot is now experimentally up to twenty feet nine inches for men and nineteen feet nine inches for women players. Dr. Ed Steitz was the athletic director at Springfield College and spent about five years on the rules committee to get this rule approved. My sense of court balance is that eighteen feet was the right distance in order to help reduce the player basket density. The 1977 rule change to allow dunking was implemented after the nine year NCAA ban. This rule was a result of Texas Western dunking themselves to a national championship over Kentucky in 1966.
Levels of play have relinquished the need for both player performance and balanced player improvement. Player growth and performance now centered on player height, not shooting and ball-handling development. “Dunking the ball”—so-called points in the paint—has become the standard.
There is a long felt need to prevent the stagnation of the game of basketball by preventing the dunk from further destroying the game, by opening the game to shorter players and accommodating various players' skill levels, by making the game more challenging and rewarding for the players, and to improve specifically their ball-handling and shooting skills, which in part gives rise to the following invention.